Happy #WorldPenguinDay !

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 25, 2017
Posted in: Nature, Photography, Video. Tagged: , , , , . 

Penguins are highly social and communicative creatures. Each penguin has a distinct call that identifies their mate or baby. It's like you or me calling out "Hey Ralph!". In other words, they communicate well within their social structure. They prefer to be in groups. This is partly for social connection, partly for survival, and partly for warmth. They huddle in groups to stay warm. In fact, they rotate their group formation, allowing the outer penguins inside the inner circle. That way, everybody gets a chance to be in the middle of the warm "group hug!". - Avia      Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti)

🐧

Origin of Zen ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 23, 2017
Posted in: Flowers, Inspiration, Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , . 

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen. -- Eckhart Tolle

#HappyEarthDay !

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 22, 2017
Posted in: Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , .


“Elephants are social animals with a high degree of intelligence similar to dolphins and great apes. These gentle giants have the longest gestation period of all mammals, carrying their developing babies for nearly two years before giving birth. Because elephants are the largest land animal in the world with the biggest brains, their long gestation period allows for proper development of the fetus in the womb. After the gestation period, a single elephant calf is born that weights about 265 pounds. While female elephants can live up to 70 years, they generally only give birth to four babies during their lifetime.” *     Where are all the African elephants?      🐘


Great Elephant Census.

A bloody owl ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 21, 2017
Posted in: Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , . 

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“Owls live within the darkness, which includes magic, mystery, and ancient knowledge. Related to the night is the moon, which owls are also connected to. It becomes a symbol of the feminine and fertility, with the moon’s cycles of renewal. Even the mythology relates owl to this wisdom and femininity.”  *

🦉

The Easter Flower ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 16, 2017
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , , , .


The Easter Flower
by Claude McKay

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.